


Artistic Differences

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Career, Fluff, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 11:47:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7531594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mick develops a business, a grudge, a crush, and possibly a thing for quoting old internet memes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Response to tumblr prompt: Mick the fireworks artist (a clever social worker got him an old school apprenticeship after juvie) and ice sculptor Len</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artistic Differences

On one hand, Mick appreciates the inexplicable uptick in business, because in this economy every job is a good job and keeps him from contemplating his inevitable turn to a life of crime once everything fails miserably.

On the other hand, then there’s _this_ asshole.

Fuck, he’s thinking in internet memes again. He’s going to kick Patty’s ass for that one. Or at least jury-rigging her police dispatch radio to rick-roll her every time she gets a call. Again. It never got old. 

Honestly, though, Mick was going to have to figure out what the hell is in the water in Central City that’s made booking both fireworks _and_ ice sculptures for all types of events so damn popular. He got into fireworks after juvie – he had a smart social worker that used the phrase “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” a lot while talking about his pyromania issues and managed to threaten, blackmail and bully him a place in a decent trade school – and he’s good, no lie. He’s very good. 

He runs his own business now and gets a decent amount of trade between the event planners and the random bozos who see his ads and think it’ll be cool to have stuff get lit on fire at a party (Mick agrees), and despite his occasional bouts of pessimism about the economy, things are actually going pretty well. He gets to do his thing with fire, people pay him for the privilege, and everyone goes home happy and fulfilled. His events are always sizzling with life, bursts of sparks and joy and happiness, filled with laughter and excitement and awe.

_Ice sculpture_ , though? Mick typically associates that type of bullshit with old rich guys who think too highly of themselves and self-important corporate meetings – you know, snoozefests. 

In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have said that to Snart upon their first meeting, but how was Mick supposed to know that Snart was the guy who made them? Why did you even need a sculpture guy to stick around for the party, anyway? Mick gets invited because his events were usually closer to the end, the grand finale, but the ice sculptures can just be taken out of the freezer and plopped onto a table, surely? What more could you possibly need to do besides that?

…probably shouldn’t have said that, either. 

Still, there was no need for Snart to be such a _drama queen_ about it. 

Also, Mick’s sense of color coordination is _just fine_ , thank you very much.

It’s not like Snart’s sculptures weren’t pretty – they were! Mick had actually been intending to look up the guy later and tell him as much; they were gloriously precise and intricate, the geometric figures almost mathematically precise, and it was obviously hand-carved, too, not some 3D printer shit. 

Mick very nearly missed his cue with the fireworks because he’d been too busy snarling insults back at Snart, but luckily the bride and groom forgive him and were totally cool with it (he’d been _mostly_ on time, anyway). By the time he made it back to his corner, Snart had disappeared, no doubt to lick his wounds in shame after Mick’s firework display kicked his stupid ice sculptures’ asses up and down the wedding aisle, and Mick had figured that that was all she wrote.

Except it turned out Snart was _also_ booked for the same job as Mick a month later, and the one two week after that one, too. 

It’s getting to the point that Mick’s starting to look around the parking lot suspiciously when he arrives with his fireworks for set-up, just in case Snart’s van is there. Every goddamn time, he walks into the reception hall – doesn’t matter if it’s a graduation, a wedding, a bat mitzvah, a goddamn _executive retreat_ – there they are, Snart’s fucking icicles. 

Much to Mick’s displeasure, they’ve only gotten more heart-stoppingly beautiful since that first time. It’d be much easier to fight with the guy if he wasn’t so freaking talented: there was one absolutely knock-out gorgeous one, with the bride and the groom curled up in each other’s arms, delicately carved so that each one stood on their own two feet yet leaned together, under a breathtakingly delicate umbrella that Snart had somehow gotten to melt first so that by the end of the evening the two of them had been covered in ‘rain’ and the bases had melted together while the way she curled into his arms remained intact and crystal clear. Mick’s never gone to art school or anything, but he figures you don’t need a degree to read the symbolism in _that_ ; worst of all, it turns out – in a sobbing speech by the newlyweds – that that was how they met and Snart’d made it just for them.

Yep. And then there’s _this_ asshole. What the hell, even. 

It’s a good thing Snart is such an asshole, too, because between his stupid inability to resist making a dumb pun in every circumstance, his supremely irritating tendency to know every last bit of fucking trivia in existence, his extremely annoying clock-like precise knowledge of the time, his extremely punchable face, his fucking _absurd_ fingers, all long and flexible, those goddamn glorious eyes, and those works of art that he churns out like it’s nothing when just looking at them makes Mick’s chest twist all funny, Mick would totally have found himself falling head over heels for the guy otherwise.

Yeah. Good thing he’s an asshole and Mick’s not dumb enough to do that.

…at least business is doing great. 

Mick’s starting to suspect that people who had initially booked him are reaching out to Snart for quick additional orders, and visa verse; it’s the only way to explain why he’s been getting so many jobs that need to be done inside a month or two when normally people plan these parties a minimum of three months out, plus the ridiculous convergence of jobs with Snart. 

He pulls out a piece of paper and starts sketching out new finale sequence for next week’s event; he’s got an idea down on paper already, but seeing Snart up his game with the sculptures has lit his brain on fire – _goddamn puns, now he has me doing them_ – and he’s just bursting with new ideas.

Mick’s also really glad that he has a lot of weddings coming up; his tension has a way of bleeding into his fireworks arrangements and while he’s pretty pleased at the write-up he got in the Picture News that called his latest set-up was “salacious” and “makes you shiver in all the right ways”, that isn’t entirely appropriate for kids’ parties and July 4th is just around the corner. 

And it’s all Snart’s fault, the fucker. He’s probably off carving his stupid sculptures in some freezer somewhere without wasting so much as a thought about Mick, as cold as his raw material and as heartless as his sculptures weren’t. 

There’s a cough at Mick’s door and Mick looks up, figuring it’s probably another new customer with a rush job for their wedding after seeing the glowing (hah, get it?) review in the paper, only to rear his head back in surprise. 

It’s Snart, looking awkward in a way he never does, hand shoved into his pockets.

“What do you want?” Mick grunts.

…well, _that_ was sure smooth, he lectures himself.

On the bright side, it seems to have made Snart unwind a bit, smirking. “You greet all your prospective customers like that?” he drawls. “I’m amazed you still have a business.”

“I do good work,” Mick says automatically, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms in front of him to try to conceal the way his heart’s sinking. Snart’s referring to himself as a prospective customer doesn’t _necessarily_ mean he’s here to see about a wedding, after all. It could be…uh…a really belated bar mitzvah? Mick can’t see Snart hiring out for a business event. “You got something you want?”

And there Snart goes, looking awkward again. “Yeah,” he says. “I wanna hire you. Fireworks, for a wedding.”

_Fuck._

Mick doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to do this, as unprofessional as that might be.

Still, he nods. Business is business, and it’s not like he and Snart had anything going on. “Wedding, huh? Well, you know I do those,” he says, gesturing for Snart to sit in one of his chairs. “You’re not doing ice for it?”

Snart snorts and drops into the chair in a way that can only be described as _lounging_. Whoever Snart’s lucky fiancée (fiancé?) is, they should tell him to stop being eye-candy all over the place; people might get the wrong impression. On the other hand, they might encourage it just to have bragging rights when Snart comes home. That’s what Mick would do.

…this is not about Mick.

“No, no ice,” Snart’s saying. “Lisa said she’d kill me if she sees another piece of ice in the next year after tripping over them so often.” He’s got a dorky little smile on his face, soft and sweet, totally unlike his usual smirks, and Mick kind of wants to die right now. He should really reject the business and move on with his life; go out and get himself laid and forget about talented artists with pretty lips and a sense of humor that can kill a man laughing at five paces. 

“You’ve been together a while, then?” Mick says, trying to keep it together.

Snart blinks at him, then actually fucking blushes, little hints of pink in those cheekbones. “Oh, it ain’t for me,” he says hastily. “It’s Lisa that’s getting hitched; Lisa – that’s my sister, I mean.”

Mick’s never held much stock in those stupid turns of story that talk about color rushing back into the world, but damn if that’s not what it feels like. _Sister’s_ wedding, not his.

“Why the hell are _you_ here, then?” Mick asks, honestly confused. “If it’s her wedding. Isn’t she planning it?”

“She is, she is,” Snart says. “She’s still making up her mind on a bunch of stuff, so I offered to take this part off her hands.”

“But she wants fireworks?” Mick presses, watching in amazement as Snart somehow manages to sink lower into his chair with…embarrassment, maybe? Mick can’t quite tell.

“I told her she ought to have ‘em,” Snart mumbles. “They’re fucking _gorgeous_ , the way you do ‘em; you tell entire stories with a bunch of sticks and colored powder like I ain’t never seen before. So I figured I’d set it up with you first and bring her by once I’ve sold her on ‘em.”

Mick blinks.

You know, Mick might not be the quickest match to catch, but even he can get a hint eventually. Patty’s made him read enough romance novels that he can recognize the pattern of mutual apparently-unrequired pining. Of course, he doesn’t know if it’s more in the nature of artistic pining or something a little less, ah, _intellectual_ than that.

Only one way to find out. And hey, if it doesn’t work, Mick can go and throw himself out a window or something else reasonable and measured like that. 

“You can tell me about it over dinner, if you like,” he says, before he can psych himself out of it.

Snart’s head rises up from where he was studying the ground and regards him with a suspicious look. “Like a conversation or like a date?” he asks.

Mick shrugs, pretending to be unaffected by which way the answer goes and probably failing miserably; poker was never his game. “I’m up for either, so up to you.”

Snart smiles again, that stupid, dorky little smile that he used for his sister.

Their wedding has fireworks that glitter like snowflakes as they fall and an ice sculpture of a twisting, turning, _melting_ flame that’s so realistic that Mick can’t tear his eyes off of it and very nearly misses his cue to go up in front of the rabbi for the actual event.

(Len forgives him.)


End file.
